ISLAMABAD, Aug 7 (APP): Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif
Monday said that peace between India and Pakistan would be possible
only through finding a durable solution to the Kashmir dispute.
“Pakistan is ready to explore a solution though diplomacy,” he
said during a meeting with Azad Jammu and Kashmir president Sardar
Masood Khan, according to a press statement from AJK Presidency.
The Foreign Minister said that Pakistan would maintain and
step up its moral, diplomatic and political support to the people of Kashmir, and work with the international community to put an end to
massive human rights violations in the Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK).
Sardar Masood Khan, thanking the Foreign Minister for strong
statement on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, said, “We welcome this affirmation that there would be no compromise on Kashmir and that
India should reciprocate Pakistan’s peace overture.”
After congratulating Khawaja Asif on his assumption of office as
the foreign minister, President Masood Khan briefed him about the
fast deteriorating human rights and humanitarian situation in the
occupied Kashmir. “It is a crisis unfolding every day,” he said.
“Every day young men are being gunned down by the occupation
forces in staged encounters and scores of political activists
demanding freedom from India are being arrested and persecuted on
the basis of fabricated, trumped up charges. There is a reign of
terror in IoK,” the AJK President said.
He thanked Pakistan for its principled, consistent and strong
stand on Kashmir bilaterally and at the international forums.
Kashmiris, he said, had vowed that they would win freedom despite
India’s repression and state terrorism. They would secure their
inalienable right to self-determination, he added.